


Chance Encounters

by andamiro (arysthaeniru)



Category: Death Note, Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 12:49:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2151351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arysthaeniru/pseuds/andamiro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If he’s going to die, he’s going to take as many people as he can with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Yukimura

He finds the book on the roof of the hospital, one day, when he is relaxing there, trying to breathe something that isn’t chemicals and illness. His French is better than his English, but he can still read english. Death Note. The instructions inside are morbid, but it fills Yukimura’s heart with happiness.

If he’s going to die, he’s going to take as many people as he can with him. 

He knows it’s stupid, but once he gets back to the hospital room, sense hits him a bit more. He can’t just do this willy-nilly, he has to plan and be careful. He can’t just kill random people. There has to be a reason, and he thinks of the Sanada dining table, where his best friend and his grandfather discussed criminals and the revolt he’d felt under his skin back then, knowing they were still alive to wreak the world damage. 

Under any other circumstances, Yukimura is sure that he wouldn’t touch it, but the bitterness bubbling through his veins, and the anger at everything for confining him to bed a bed and trapping his talent…that overdoes anything his morals might have felt. 

He does a few tests with criminals he sees on the TV of the hospital room. The staff get a little confused now that Yukimura watches more TV, but they don’t protest. The book brings others death, but it brings him life. He glows like he hasn’t before and more laughter from the children who come to see him, rings through the hospital halls. 

On the fifth day, a shinigami shows up, and yes, Yukimura does scream, thinking he is going to die. Thinking he has increased the chances of his death by killing others. This isn’t what he wanted. But the shinigami, Ryuk, is quick to reassure Yukimura that he isn’t there to kill him yet. He thinks that Yukimura’s interesting and the shinigami’s laughs so hard at the pages upon pages of the book that are filled, and declares that he’ll be happy to watch this out.

Yukimura doesn’t really trust Ryuk that much, but he’s a companion for the long days in hospital. Sanada and his team-members can only be there so often, but Ryuk has to stay with him. He spends a lot of time on the hospital roof with Ryuk, and some of the hospital food that he doesn’t have the stomach for, but that Ryuk enjoys. 

He tells Ryuk pretty much everything about him and the human world, and in return, Ryuk tells him so much about the shinigami world and the rules of the Death Note, about how he can keep pages on him, the various ways of customizing deaths, how shinigami use the Death Note and how Yukimura will never be able to go to Heaven or Hell because of using the book. Yukimura just laughs at that, because he knows that when people die, they go to neither anyway. 

Sanada mentions briefly, after a month of owning the notebook and watching the police scramble and go crazy over who Kira was, that Yukimura’s changed. Yukimura feigns innocence and shifts the notebook under his pillow a little further. The invisible shinigami by his side chuckles. He tells Sanada that the prospect of dying will do that to someone and Sanada shouts at him, telling Yukimura that he isn’t going to die from this!

Yukimura just smiles and says placidly that there is no cure. Sanada storms out of the room, angry that Yukimura has given up. Yukimura is lying, but only partially. He will die, but he now knows it will not be by the hand of his illness, but by the clawed hand of his shinigami.

Until then, he is going to make as many people suffer as he can and if they are criminals, so what?


	2. Kirihara

He finds the book on his way to tennis practise, outside his maths class. He hadn't been paying attention in class, when he first saw it out of the window, and doesn't get a chance to pick up the book until he's accidentally smashed a vase, cleaned it up and exchanged his notes with the pretty girl from Class 2-C, who's gossipping to her friend about Kira and his newest set of deaths. He doesn't think too much at the title of the book at the time, just tucks it into his bag and runs to practise. In the end, he still gets thirty laps from Sanada and a strong backhand. 

It isn't until he gets home that he pulls out the book and looks at it for real. The cover's in some weird language, but the inside has english written. Akaya can't read english, but his pride doesn't allow him to pick up the phone and call Yanagi-senpai. This isn't like homework; Akaya will only get told by Yanagi-senpai to not bother him with trivial things. Akaya doesn't like seeing Yanagi-senpai mad at him, because when Yanagi-senpai's mad, he ignores Akaya, instead of shouting like Sanada-fukubuchou or disapproving like Yukimura-buchou. So, with google translate, he gets a pretty broken description of what the book does. A book that kills people with a heart-attack or by any description that Akaya describes. 

Other people would not believe it, but Akaya still believes in Santa and the Tooth Fairy. He doesn't doubt that the book can kill. He thinks about using it on Sanada-fukubuchou for a bit, as he pokes at the cut on his lip from the slap that he'd got for being late, but thinks that Yanagi-senpai and Yukimura-senpai would get sad, so doesn't bother. 

He sort of dismisses the book for about a week of tennis and studies and evenings at the arcade, until he gets grounded by his mum for coming home too late (which had totally been Jackal-senpai's fault, they'd missed the train because of his stupid need to pay for their snack). Being stuck in his room means that Akaya finally pays attention to the black book of english on his desk. He's sort of idly thought about it as they practised for Districts, whether he can just time his opponents death to happen in the middle of their match, so he wins by default. But there's too much risk of the match being delayed by weather or he actually facing a different player for Akaya to really do it. Besides, killing someone for daring to play Rikkai is low, even for him. 

But he's not really, _really_ thought about what to do about it. What do you even do with a book of death? Give it to someone? Kill the people who annoyed him?

It's tempting to write down the name of his english teacher for giving him an F or write down the name of his classmate behind him in maths who keeps blowing spitballs at his hair. But Akaya's not stupid, just a kid. He knows about death and what death really implies and he can't do that to someone, even if he really has moments that verge of throttling the boy behind him in maths. 

It's at that moment that Rem, the shinigami shows up and Akaya falls out of his chair from shock. The scariest part about Rem isn't that she looks like a demon. It's that she's a physical manifestation of Akaya's inner demons and inner desires and anger. She isn't surprised that Akaya hadn't used the notebook, but he does continue to urge Akaya to use it. In class, when he's struggling to pay attention to the droning science teacher, or at lunchtime when he's struggling with his classmates for the chance to actually eat the lunch that his mother packed for him for once, or when he's running a billion laps because Sanada-fukubuchou's sad about buchou's hospitalization. 

Finally, Akaya snaps after two weeks and threatens to burn the book unless Rem shuts up, and his eyes turn red and the whole world goes red. When he's back to his normal state, Rem's holding him like he's a child and he cries on her bony shoulders, saying that he doesn't want to kill anybody, because he's afraid that he'll die himself. She is quiet for a long time, before she tells him that he cannot die because another shinigami had already died for him and extended his lifespan. 

He listens to the story of Gelus, the shinigami who thought his life was beautiful and his existence was wonderful. He listens about how the car accident that had almost skewered the bus he'd been sleeping on the way to Seigaku, and how Gelus had prevented it and died for Akaya. A death god dying for Akaya. It's a little surreal, but Rem's finally explained why she's so adamant about Akaya using it. 

Akaya asks Rem whether Rem would take the notebook back if he used it at least once, and Rem nods. She says that she can take it back at any time, but Akaya has decided that for the sake of the shinigami who thought that Akaya's life was worth preserving, he'll kill at least one person. 

It's after a particularly frustrating day of lessons that Akaya skips practise to go visit buchou in hospital. The sight that greets him is weird, because Rem tenses up, like she's never done before at something about buchou's head. Akaya first dismisses it, when he goes to curl up with Yukimura-buchou on the bed, complaining about everything from the state of their tennis balls to the friability of the school-issued paper, but when Yukimura-buchou's pillow shifts to reveal a black notebook that looks very similar, Akaya stills. 

He asks Yukimura whether Yukimura is Kira. It hasn't occurred to him until today that the series of strange criminals being murdered is because of a Death Note, but it makes more sense now. He asks Yukimura why, and Yukimura is oddly quiet and pale. He says because of Sanada but Akaya's not stupid about people. He gets people and their cues and how people work. He might not be able to explain it like Yanagi-senpai, but he gets it. It takes a bit more prodding and a promise to show Rem to Yukimura, that Yukimura finally tells him that he's going to die and he wants people to go with him before Ryuk kills him. 

Akaya bites his lip and glances down at his bag. He can see Ryuk and he's even more scary than Rem, who's just a big softie. He then softly asks Yukimura whether he wants to die by his own terms and Ryuk looks sort of panicked. Yukimura's mouth twitches up, with a sharp amusement that Akaya hasn't seen from anyone other than Niou, but shakes his head, and says he's happy to die by Ryuk's hand. 

So Akaya instead says that he has to kill someone and whether there's a particular criminal that's really evil and who deserves to die. Yukimura just laughs and kisses Akaya's forehead, with the soft reassurance that Akaya didn't _need_ to kill anyone and that the only thing he needed to do with a Death Note was to use it as an eternal source of kindling.

Nevertheless, when Yukimura passes away, Akaya takes up his work, quietly and without protest and tells Ryuk to drop his notebook again for someone else who believes in Kira. Not many people talk about Yukimura-buchou's tennis anymore, even though that's what made him so amazing, so he wants something of Yukimura's buchou to carry on.


End file.
